Overdrive magazine

An encounter with a pair of joy-riding, inconsiderate motorcyclists over Memorial Day turned dramatic when truck driver Bethany, blogging at One Girl Trucking, decided enough was enough and confronted the bikers at a red light.
Read her account, a sort of pitch and plea to bikers, motorists and truckers alike for more courtesy and common sense on the road, via her One Girl Trucking blog here.
If you haven't encountered her blog before, Bethany describes herself as ...

This 1986 Peterbilt 359 is the result of a three-year project conducted from 2007-10 by owners Wayne and Kelly Ziegenfuss, today leased to Bennett Motor Express and hauling mining equipment to Arizona, coming back with copper, on a step deck from a Hendersonville, N.C., home base.
I met the pair at the Southeastern Regional Truck Show in April. They located the base truck in Virginia and did all the work themselves putting it back into operating/show ...

The Bogan case may be best viewed in the context of tried-and-true advice: be smart and choosy about who you run for. You never know when you may need the boss to go to bat for you rather than hanging you out to dry by being forced out of business.

The folks with the Truck Driver Social Media Convention are gearing up for their second annual meeting -- and have been sharing highlights of the two-day program in process for Oct. 27-28 in Kansas City via the AsktheTrucker.com blog.
Among the presenters this year will be Elaine Papp, Division Chief of the FMCSA's Office of Medical Programs. Got a question relative to driver medical qualifications / FMCSA's plans to regulate the sleep apnea condition? Given the ...

I talked to a pair of recently former team owner-operators late last week who, like owner-operator Mike Mace, leased to Reed Trucking, have truly rediscovered their old love of trucking -- in this case as company drivers in service operations surrounding new natural gas wells enabled by hydraulic fracturing technology.
The strong demand for capacity in oil and gas services is bringing in competition to local markets as large as, you guessed it, Schneider National. The truckload ...

Yesterday, owner-operator Dan Heister invited myself and the family out to his new place in Tennessee Ridge, Tenn., near his former home in Erin, for a cookout with various other friends and family. Something of an early Memorial Day celebration, as Heister was setting out today with a northeast-bound load of rock in his new 2004 International (pictured, replacing a model of similar vintage but much higher mileage), he took some time out of the ...

Something is going right for the Jacobson Companies 3PL -- Mack Trucks announced yesterday that they took delivery of an order of 259 built-in-the-U.S. Mack Pinnacles, 139 daycabs and 120 sleeper trucks, and they're hiring dedicated company drivers for runs based out of their Des Moines, Iowa, headquarters. Any owner-operators out their run freight for them on occasion or regularly?
The new tractors (some of which are pictured), Mack says, were delivered to Jacobson locations throughout ...

Can you? We’ve heard no shortage of stories of independents who’ve stayed active that long leased to different carriers or on their own, but never with the same company. (If you have, I'm all ears!)
I can't think of a company driver who's done it, either (though Wisconsin-based Butch Mueller is getting pretty close), and as far as UPS knows, Springboro, Ohio, resident Ron “Big Dog” Sowder (pictured) “may be the only in the trucking ...

1. Installation best at the factory or authorized dealer aftermarket: If you're considering an aftermarket inverter installation to an older truck or mulling options on a new vehicle, take it under advisement that leading inverter manufacturer Xantrex Technology reps have formally recommended inverter installation by a truck OEM or an authorized dealer.
According to Xantrex, inverter shipments have risen sharply since 2005, and the company expects sales to increase at least 40 percent in the next ...

If you've never participated in one of the Make-a-Wish convoys -- which pair children with trucks to make dreams come true and support the work of various Make-a Wish Foundation chapters around the nation -- take a look at the smile on the face of Nicholas Cropper here, pictured in the passenger seat of owner-operator Henry Albert's Freightliner Cascadia.
Also, get over to Albert's blog, where just post-Mother's Day, he wrote about his participation in this ...